Senator Vanstone said she believed grassroots indigenous Australians would support the government decision to abolish ATSIC.

"As to the indigenous politics of it, that's another issue," she said.

"What the government is concerned about is delivering better services to indigenous Australians, giving them a better chance to share in our prosperity, which the current arrangements simply have not done."

But Mr Clark said the decision was the result of a lack of government action on Aboriginal affairs, false allegations of corruption and a government-controlled media.

"In a strong democracy there would have been a genuine debate," he said.

"What we have had is a filtered debate, not a full debate, with selected pieces of information.

"(Aboriginal) people are crying in frustration at the conditions they have faced and this has not been addressed."

Mr Clark said he would fight on to have ATSIC restored.

"We will keep fighting.

"We will fight by whichever means necessary to get it back."

ATSIC's acting chairman Lionel Quartermaine said he was very disappointed but not surprised by the decision.

He said indigenous Australians had been failed by federal and state governments, rather than ATSIC, and getting rid of the organisation would simply rip away the directly elected representatives of indigenous people.

"You're not going to go to sleep tomorrow and believe that there'll be no Aboriginal people in Australia and issues will go away," he told reporters.

"If John Howard and the coalition government believes that they're kidding themselves.

"I'm black, I wake up in the morning and I'm black, the sun will shine, the black issues that we see and face ... will always be here today and tomorrow."

Mr Quartermaine said the mainstreaming of indigenous programs had failed in the past, and would not be a success in the future.

He said the proposed advisory committee would have little-to-no power.

"To even think about establishing an advisory body just to advise government, that means government can just take their word or ignore their word," he said.

"I encourage anyone on that list to don't be party to it, because they're what they're doing is selling out indigenous self-determination."

Mr Quartermaine said the planned ATSIC board meeting in May would go ahead. The government plans to introduce its legislation abolishing ATSIC during the May parliamentary sittings.

He said ATSIC would petition independent senators to oppose the abolition legislation.

If the government had acted against ATSIC because of the ongoing questions over Geoff Clark, then it was doing a disservice to indigenous issues.

"To justify all indigenous issues on one man and to blame one man for the downfall and the responsibility of education and employment, then I'm disillusioned with our leaders," he said.